Two mother lodes of free streaming get mined, starting today, as the BBC Proms -- audio streamed live, then archived -- and Verbier Festival -- audio and video streamed live, then archived -- open their seasons.
The BBC Proms do not pander, but they know how to go big. The annual festival kicks off today with a First Night performance of Janacek's roiling Glagolitic Mass, conducted by Jiri Belohlávek. You can listen in on BBC 3, which has a whole site devoted to the Proms.
Meanwhile, a bit to the east, and up a mountain or two is the Verbier Festival, which has invited conductor Charles Dutoit and pianist Nelson Freire to add their star power to the high-altitude romp. The programme offers an unlikely pairing: Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 with Stravinsky's 1911 Petrouchka Suite. (What makes the odd pairing possible -- and which we won't see -- is a street festival outside the Salle des Combins during intermission).
Select performances from Verbier are streamed on medici.tv live before being available for free for a limited time. The site asks for registration, but, in my experience, they are really good about not sending too many solicitation emails.
The Canadian Children's Opera Company performs at the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna on July 5
Canada did beautifully at the fifth annual Summa Cum Laude youth music festival in Vienna last week. Representing Toronto were members of the Canadian Children's Opera Company, who placed second in the treble choir category (treble refers to unchanged children's voices).
There were 30 choirs and instrumental groups present, with the biggest representation coming from China. The finalists all had a chance to perform in the glorious Musikverein. However, the real glory surely isn't in being a finalist, or in which history-soaked venue the performances happened in, but in the experience itself.
First of all, there is the heady feeling of making great music with one's peers -- something all children lucky enough to belong to a choir or band or orchestra experience every time they get together. Then there is the joy of meeting other, equally enthusiastic kids from other places. Then there is the adventure of seeing new places.
For 50 members of the Canadian Children's Opera Company and their artistic director Ann Cooper Gay, the Vienna stop was one of several destinations visited during this summer's outing to Austria and Italy, which began June 28 and ends on Wednesday.
It's incredibly difficult work to make all this happen -- from the fundraising in the months leading up to the trip, to figuring out how to keep track of each child and his or her socks, dirty underwear and nutritional quirks. In spite of all that, pretty much every child and parent and leader who has ever been part of a summer concert tour will tell you that they would do it over again and again in a heartbeat.
As the old credit card commercial would remind us, the memories are priceless.
Here are two video clips of the Canadian Children's Opera Company kids in action, at a museum in Liechtenstein on July 3 (there are no further details provided with these clips):
SAVALL’s performance this sunday, may 8, 2011 at koerner hall
has already been re-scheduled for thursday, march 1, 2012
Following an injury he sustained while on a European tour, and on the advice of doctors, one of the most celebrated viol (viola da gamba) players,Jordi Savall, has cancelled his North American concerts. Mr. Savall and his ensembleHespèrion XXI, 2011 Grammy Award winners for Best Small Ensemble Performance, were slated to make theirKoerner Hall debut this Sunday, May 8, 2011, at 8:00pm.
Mervon Mehta, Executive Director, Performing Arts, has been able to re-book Mr. Savall for the recently announced 2011-12 concert season, for Thursday, March 1, 2012, at 8:00pm.
The Royal Conservatory regrets the inconvenience and ticket buyers have the option of keeping their existing tickets, which will be valid for the new date, exchanging into a concert during our 2011-12 season, or obtaining a refund.
Ticket exchanges and refunds are available by calling 416.408.0208
There are just a few weeks left in the Smithsonian's Steinway exhibit, and I finally had a chance to check out the diaries of William Henry Steinway, a portion of which which the museum has made available online. He was the main driving force in the rise of Steinway & Sons, the developer of his own little section of Queens, as well as being a significant force in New York City's civic life.
The most striking thing about the entries is how earth-shattering events (in this case, the first big clash between Union and Confederate armies in the American Civil War) are reduced to footnote status -- Sunday, July 21, 1861: "Battle of Bull Run" -- while we find out that Steinway's wife Regina got seasick on the boat crossing from Niagara to Toronto on Aug. 20. The next day, he was given a tour of the city by a Nordheimer (one of Toronto's two big pianomaking families). "Splendid place," he writes.
The diaries brim with the little details of the very busy life of a keen entrepreneur. Steinway died, aged 61, in 1896. Here are the entries for June 3 & 4, 1877:
At 9 A.M. to factory, see Kroeger talk everything over with him, & see that Iron Resonator in Grand is dropped, & Alberts improvement made. Then drive to Brosi, but do not find any of the Tafelrunde there. Take dinner with mother then drive to Kroegers house, to Astoria with him with him & Luther through the factory, third floor is completely finished, we talk over everything I then with Williams, Judge Pierce & Theodore Schultz look over my Rapalye Property on Winthrop Ave to locate auxiliary Waterworks, I then walk to Stonehouse Luther says that he will move during this week Drive to 52d str. leave horse & buggy there then home by 4th Ave. find my children and many other children at supper, George celebrating his 12th birthday which falls upon tomorrow. Mr. Tretbar, Chas & Henry & I play Skat, lose 5 Cents
Yesterday & today slight touch in Elbow pit of right arm, take lunch at Rathskeller, Dr. Auerbach there. Take a Steambath in afternoon, my 6th this season, at home in eve'g, draw up my will
It doesn't look like there are any thunderbolts of enlightenment in these diaries, but it is a fun way to pass some time in another time and place, so different and yet so similar to our own.
Versailles Spectacles, the organization in charge of a small, year-round opera season and summer musical entertainment at the Château de Versailles near Paris, today unveiled a spectacular summer festival called Venise Vivaldi Versailles, running from June 24 to July 17.
The co-producer of the festival is the record label Naïve, which will be celebrating the conclusion of a massive, 12-year project to record all of Vivaldi's music (a project that has included Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, back when she was starting out).
The aesthetic inspiration comes from the extravagant parties thrown in and around the palace by King Louis XV (1710-1774). (Details here.)
Mezzo Cecilia Bartoli and red-hot countertenor Philippe Jaroussky present solo recitals, Jordi Savall leads a performance of Vivaldi's opera Teuzzone, William Christie leads staged performances of Lully's opera Atys, there will be several different interpretations of Vivaldi's Four Seasons -- and John Malkovich is doing a musical play on the life of Casanova.
There will be evenings of fireworks mixed with performance art and music, and even a Baroque-themed masked ball at the Orangerie on July 9.
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One of my favourite of the Naïve Vivaldi recordings is La Senna festeggiante (Festival time on the Seine). There is a single, undated, manuscript copy of the score for this serenata (a secular mix of vocal and instrumental movements that's a cross between a cantata and an opera) at the National Library in Turin. The extensive background notes that came with my copy of the Naïve album -- the 12th in the Vivaldi series, and the first of his secular voal music, back in 2001 -- say that the piece was written between 1722-25, a time when Vivaldi was the favourite composer of France's ambassador to Venice, the Comte de Gergy.
You can find all of the details on this album here.
Written as the culmination of a day-long party, the Italian serenata was sort of like an English masque. La Senna festeggiante is totally over the top -- and fabulous. Unfortunately, it's too obscure to draw tourists to Versailles, so it won't be part of the summer lineup.
But that doesn't mean we can't listen to the Overture. This is from a live, 2009 performance by period-performance ensemble Il delirio fantastico led by Vincent Bernhardt:
My feature on Nixon in China in today's Star has vanished without a trace in the electronic realm, so here is my original draft -- with corrections:
Photo: Robert Orth as Richard M. Nixon in Canadian Opera Company Production of Nixon in China. Michael Cooper/Canadian Opera Company
“We live in an unsettled time. Who are our enemies? Who are Our friends? The Eastern Hemisphere beckoned to us, and we have flown East of the sun, west of the moon Across an ocean of distrust Filled with the bodies of our lost; The earth’s Sea of Tranquility. It’s prime time in the U.S.A.”
These couplets look back on a pivotal point in world history, while getting inside the mind of one of the most notorious politicians of our age.
The politician is former American president Richard Milhous Nixon. The place is the airport tarmac in Beijing, China. The date is Feb. 21, 1972.
The Republican President, still popular at the end of his first term in office, decided to make a mark on posterity by breaking through a quarter century of tense silence between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.
The world watched this surprise move with bated breath.
What must have been going through the thoughts of President Nixon, his steadfast wife Pat, an aging Chairman Mao, his politically radical wife Jiang Qing, and the two figures who made things happen behind the scenes: American secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Chinese premier Zhou Enlai?
American composer John Adams had never written an opera score and poet Alice Goodman had never written a libretto, but that didn’t stop them from trying to answer the question on the musical stage.
It doesn’t matter whether it was beginner’s luck or the alchemy of having two exceptionally bright creative minds feed off each other, but the opera Nixon in China was born at the Houston Grand Opera on Oct. 22, 1987.
“I’m amazed that I wrote the piece because I had no experience writing for solo voice and I had no experience writing for opera or any kind of stage,” admits Adams, who is now one of the world’s best-known and best-loved composers of art music. “So, the first time out, I wrote this piece that’s had quite a healthy life throughout the world.”
On Wednesday night, the composer conducted the Metropolitan Opera premiere of Nixon in China – a Peter Sellars-directed production that Canadians will be able to see live at Cineplex theatres on Feb. 12.
On Saturday afternoon, Nixon in China gets its Canadian Opera Company premiere, at the Four Seasons Centre. This is a co-production that originated at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2004.
Adams himself is having a starry moment in these parts: His music is the focus of this year’s New Creations Festival, organized by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (see sidebar).
Since writing Nixon in China, Adams has come up with several other operas, including The Death of Klinghoffer (about a ship passenger killed during an act of terrorism in 1985) and, more recently, Doctor Atomic, which takes us inside the mind of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer just before the atomic bomb he invented is about to be dropped on two Japanese cities in 1945.
All of these works are about our times and our issues. Just don’t call them docu-operas.
“Nobody ever picks up a novel and says, oh, this is a docu-novel or a CNN-novel because it deals with events that are in our lifetime, nor do they say that about movies. But when I compose and opera about an event that happened, then it becomes a docu-opera,” says Adams, with obvious frustration. “It’s so ridiculous and so demeaning to what I’ve done that I can’t even begin to understand it.”
For the composer, opera at its best has to be about there here and now. “I think if opera is going to have any kind of life and future, it really ought to be dealing with themes and archetypes that are very much a part of our contemporary existence,” Adams insists.
Nixon’s self-consciousness about the place he is making for himself in history, and the awareness that every move he makes and every word he utters will be picked up by the media is even more relevant in 2011 than it was in 1972.
Th trick is to turn this into art.
Adams says that, in his operas, he has tried to outline “Leitmotifs in every American’s consciousness. To poeticize it, to raise it to the level of art is, I think, a very meaningful activity.”
Music is an essential ingredient.
Although it’s labeled as minimalist, Adam’s rhythmically complex score is much more than that. It is an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of rhythm and melody that, with each twist of the plot, almost imperceptibly shifts to underpin a fresh new mood and thrust.
“When it lines up it lines up and makes perfect sense and it’s like rock ‘n’ roll,” says baritone Robert Orth, who portrays Nixon in the Canadian Opera Company production.
Director James Robinson first cast the singer in this production’s premiere in St. Louis, back in 2004.
Tall and gregarious, with an open face and ready laugh, Orth is almost the physical and emotional opposite of the taciturn former President. But the baritone is also a consummate actor.
“Sometimes when I’m in rehearsal, I’ll find myself doing some gesture,” Orth relates with a big shrug. “And then I’ll think, oh, that’s not very Nixonian. He was much stiffer than that. So you find a way to express a character within those boundaries.”
Over the course of the last seven years, Orth has become the definitive Richard Nixon on the opera stage.
“I’m so grateful to him. How many people are grateful to Richard Nixon?” the baritone laughs.
Orth is also grateful for new opera, which has allowed him to play Nixon, former President Lyndon B. Johnson (in Aug. 4, 1964, by Steven Stucky) and architect Frank Lloyd Wright (in Daron Hagen’s Shining Brow).
“I feel so fortunate, so blessed to be able to do these things, because it speaks to who I am; it is who I am,” says Orth. “I live vocally and personally in this land between the European artform and the American musical theatre. So many of these new pieces in English occupy that land.”
The singer loves the directness of musical theatre – and many scenes of Nixon in China.
At the close of Act III, Premier Zhou reflects the doubts of anyone in a position of responsibility when he sings, “How much of what we did was good?”
“You take these people, they’re just ordinary people, but they’re thrown into these extraordinary situations and they have to make decisions that affect millions, if not billions of people,” Orth explains.
“Isn’t that what all great stories are about – people being thrown into interesting, or extraordinary or difficult situations?”
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Here is Walter Cronkite introducing a broadcast of the opera's premiere production, which was directed by Peter Sellars at Houston Grand Opera (the music starts at the 4-1/2-minute mark):
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Nixon on CD Robert Orth is one of four members of the principal cast of the Canadian Opera Company production of Nixon in China to be featured on a 3-CD box released by Naxos in 2009. The strong singing and exceptionally muscular and nuanced playing by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra under American star conductor Marin Alsop make for a richly satisfying listen. The booklet includes the full libretto.
TODAY AT 12:10 p.m.: A free, short recital of six songs from A Shropshire Lad by George Butterworth, by baritone Brett Polegato and pianist Che Ann Loewen. Eric Domville will provide a bit of commentary. It's at University of Toronto's Walter Hall.
THE WHOLE MONTH, STARTING SATURDAY: Bau-Xi Gallery (across the street from the AGO, just east of Beverley St.) is hosting a photo show by New York City-based David Leventi, who likes to stand on the stages of the world's great opera houses and take gorgeous (and expensive) pictures. They're big, giving even more punch to the ornate décor of each auditorium.
The gallery is hanging the photos as I type, but the vernissage isn't until Saturday.
Here are two of my favourites from David Leventi's photos -- both of theatres I had not seen before. (I'll keep you guessing for 30 seconds on where these gorgeous rooms are.)
I think the second auditorium deserves a soundtrack. Here's is a young Angela Gheorigiu singing "Muzica" by Romanian composer George Grigoriu:
Sometimes, the last sentence of an article should come first.
“The future of classical music is here.”
This statement by Shirley Young, chairwoman of the US-China Cultural Institute, closes a story on the explosion of interest in Western opera in China that apepared in yesterday's New York Times.
Of course, the sentence overstates the situation, but it helps to underline a the inevitable cultural ramifications of the shift in economic power from West to East. (I am just old enough to have been educated by unrepentant Marxists, so it's hard to shake a belief that cultural activity is determined by economic factors.)
The article, which only concerns itself with opera, is very much about the here-and-now, marking both an increased interest in Western works as well as a desire to create indigenous new operas. It's a good read.
But the interest in Western-style opera is merely the latest in a long, steady and incredibly successful growth in interest in European art music, cultivated for the last three decades by enterprising classical westerners -- including many Canadians.
I know that the Royal Conservatory of Music has worked hard to get its learning system accepted in China, and there have to be many other opportunities for Canadians to get involved not only as performers, but as teachers, coaches and facilitators.
Are we being enterprising enough to take full advantage of this explosion of interest in something we do really well?
Luciano Pavarotti, who had a nose for good opportunities, took himself to China in 1986. Here is a little something pieced together from his tour, which included some master classes:
There's a 19th century town on a quiet bay nestled on a small rocky cape about an hour north of Boston where comfortable city people go during the summer to breathe in the the fresh, salty air and admire the work of the local colony of visual artists.
Rockport, and it's chamber music festival was graced by one of the world's finest pianists, Marc-André Hamelin, last month, to help inaugurate the Shalin Liu Performance Center, its new concert hall overlooking Sandy Bay.
Boston radio station WGBH recorded the concert, and NPR has packaged it with a background article as well as a 6 minute interview with the Montreal-born pianist. Click on the picture for all the details.
Avilable for a free listen is Alban Berg's Op. 1 Piano Sonata, Franz Liszt's B-minor Piano Sonata, a short Tchaikovsky-inspired Hamelin Etude and a gorgeous little picturesque by Leopold Godowsky: Gardens of Buitenzorg.
Today marks the start of the professional concerts at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, which runs to Aug. 1. That means a rich selection of performances being streamed in high definition on medici.tv. The festival attracts the best of the best.
Tonight's opening concert features pianist Yuja Wang and conductor Charles Dutoit in prorgamme of Enesco, Prokofiev (the Second Piano Concerto) and Mahler (First Symphony). The truly phenomenal Wang is in residence, so there are, I think, three performances of hers that will be available on the Web, including a solo recital.
That concert will stream live today at 1 p.m. EDST
Also coming up is a solo recital by tenor Rolando Villazón, with Hélène Grimaud as accompanist, on July 31.
The festival has a new indoor venue, the Salle des Combins, which is no aesthetic gift to the breathtakingly-set Alpine ski village, but should make for a great concert experience. The festival uses a number of old churches in the area, and a local movie theatre for late-night concerts.
This year, the great Elisabeth Leonskaja (who turns 65 this fall) is presenting the full cycle of Schubert piano sonatas at the venue, starting tomorrow night.
You won't catch Leonskaya on medici.tv's schedule, so, to get a taste of her lovely Schubert, here she is giving the E-flat Op. 90 Impromptu her silken touch in Gstaad a few weeks ago:
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PROJECT MARTHA ARGERICH NETS FINE CD BOX
Pianist Martha Argerich is a regular guest at Verbier, fresh from her own festival, the chamber-music-focused Martha Argerich Project, in Lugano.
For the past few years, EMI has released a best-of CD set from the previous year's festival. The 2009 selection, on 3 CDs is particularly fine.
The big revelation for me was Ernest Bloch's Piano Quintet No. 1, which crashes and bangs about in a crazy way in the first movement, has a haunting "Andante mistico" second movement, then begins a frenzy in the third movement which ends with a magical suspended ending that I've had to listen to over and over again.
The list of performers on the CD set is as long as the festival's programme. The Bloch is performed by pianist Lilya Zilberstein, violinists Alissa Margoulis Lucia Hall, Nora Romanoff-Schwartzberg, viola, and Mark Drobinsky on cello.
There are 19th century chestnuts here, too, including a whole disc devoted to Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin, as well as a disc of Russian treats. The overriding impression from listening to the set is one of boundless energy and verve in the musicmaking. (For all the details, click on the CD image.)
John Terauds started at the Toronto Star as a freelance writer in 1988, and has been on staff since 1997. He began writing on classical music in 2001, and has been the full-time classical music critic since 2005.
He is also the organist and choir director at St. Peter's Anglican Church, a parish founded in 1863 in downtown Toronto.
If he's not listening to, writing about or playing music, it means he's either asleep, unconscious, walking his dog -- or all of the above.
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